Trail of Evil

by Travis S. Taylor

  Candis, DeathRay thought to his AIC. How are you doing on the controls for this thing?

  Almost there, DeathRay. Jack, Nancy’s on top. She needs a lift.

  Understood.

  Got it. The controls should be yours, Candis said in DeathRay’s mind.

  “All right, everybody! We’re going out full throttle! Hang on, and fire at anything that moves! See if you can’t help out our troops along the way as we’ve also gotta do an extraction on top of this hangar bay! And then, if you feel like it, drop some charges and blow this sonofabitch to hell and back!”

  “Roger that!” came resounding confirmation from the team.

  DeathRay hit the throttle, thrusting them all back into their seats at four g’s, and punching through what was left of the hangar door. Shrapnel flew around the cabin as rifle fire pinged the hull. Several of the robot spider defenders leaped into the open doorway at the soldiers on board the commandeered shuttle.

  Dee grabbed one by a giant spiderlike leg and forced the butt of her HVAR through its head. Sparks flew, but it didn’t stop the spider, its razor-sharp claws digging into her armored hands. Dee continued to pound at it, pulling her sidearm and firing several rounds through the thing. Finally it gave up the ghost, just as four more crawled in toward her. Dee grabbed the dead spider and used it like a battle mace to pummel her oncoming assailants.

  “Sergeant Ridley! Gimme a hand here!” Dee shouted.

  But Ridley was covered himself, pinned face-first against the bulkhead of the shuttle by several of the robot spiders.

  “Get this damn thing offa me!” he screamed as claws tore through the back of his armored suit and into his spine. He screamed again, a bloodcurdling sound. Dee saw him go limp. The suit’s systems would hopefully keep him alive long enough to get him to the medbay on the Madira. Dee flung herself across his body onto the spider, grabbing the spider and pulling it free, but also suffering several slashes from the bot herself. Realizing the deck plate materials were softer than the materials the bot was made from, she bashed it through the deck plate of the shuttle using a mechanized fist.

  With her hand now sticking down through the hole and an artificial intelligence death-bot gripping it, she felt the suit give way, and pulled back as the organogel sealed over a stump where her hand used to be. The limb was severed halfway up her forearm. She pulled her sidearm with her left hand, firing several rounds into the hole. Adrenaline pounding through her veins like battery acid, she stomped another bot with her jump boots while doing her best not to look at where here hand used to be.

  “DEATHRAY, GET US THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!” she screamed.

  Candis, we gotta do something! Go full scans, give me a Red force tracker on this shuttle!

  Roger that, Jack.

  In Boland’s mind appeared a three-dimensional view of the shuttle, which showed that they had at least twenty of the spider-bots crawling around on the structure and within the shuttle itself. The Blue force tracker showed that Sergeant Ridley was down completely, with very weak vital signs. The suit was the only thing keeping him alive. Lieutenant Rackman was already severely wounded. Dee showed casualty status, and Gunny James, Army Specialist Adams, Corporal Hawkins, and Petty Officer First Class Hansen were showing out of ammo and extremely elevated vitals.

  DeathRay looked through the systems on the shuttle for something that would help, and then one of the bots disappeared from the Red force tracker. Then a second disappeared from the tracker.

  Candis! Are we being spoofed?

  Negative, DeathRay. That’s Nancy.

  You’re damn right it is.

  Penzington, you’re a sight for sore eyes!

  Get in closer, Boland, and I’ll clean you off!

  Jack flew the shuttle in as close to the top of the hangar surface as he could, as he saw across the sky the glint of an armor suit somersaulting, headed toward the ship, arms outstretched, holding a rifle, firing nonstop. Then there was a thud against the hull, and the Blue force tracker showed another soldier had joined their mix.

  Nancy rushed across the surface of the shuttle, dispensing with the bots with her hypervelocity rifle rounds. It would take two to three rounds for each bot. That was something she knew would have to change. Holding on with one hand to the surface of the shuttle, she swung over the side and through the open door, drop-kicking one of the spider-bots that had crawled up the back of one of Jack’s teammates. She could see that the four conscious troops were doing the best they could. One of them was down completely and one of them—Dee—was fighting one-handed.

  Nancy pulled an EMP grenade from her vest and said, “Everybody hold your breath and cover your ears!” She popped the grenade and it blew a hole through the back of the shuttle as a loud clank and thud vibrated throughout the little ship, rattling her teeth nearly out of her skull.

  The EMP scattered across every surface and every system, blowing them out. Jack’s team was frozen in their suits, but the spiders were dead, too. Another byproduct of the EMP grenade was that it wreaked havoc on the electrical systems of the shuttle, knocking out the structural integrity fields. As soon as the fields went down the cabin depressurized.

  Nancy blew the escape panel from the back of her suit, dropped her helmet, and crawled to the hatch opening, slamming the door shut while holding her breath. She hit the emergency pressurization panel and could feel oxygen rushing in. It was clear to her that, for whatever reason, the bots had built the shuttle to accommodate humans. The few seconds of vacuum left her slightly lightheaded and dizzy, but she shook it off and used adrenaline to push through it.

  The shuttle repressurized continuously as air leaked out every tear and hole the battle had created. Nancy hoped there was enough air in the system to keep the pressure up until she could kick the SIFs back on. She shivered and shook her head to clear it as she dragged herself to the cockpit, where she grabbed the controls out of Jack’s frozen hands. Nancy slapped the cockpit door switch, sealing it off from the rear and therefore maintaining pressure. She dropped into the copilot seat and took over piloting the shuttle in the nick of time. The small spacecraft was on a collision course with the Sienna Madira’s starboard side. She pulled back on the yoke and stepped hard on the right rudder, throwing the shuttle into a hard right upward bank. The bottom of the shuttle missed a radome tower by millimeters.

  “Damn, that was close,” she said as she grinned at DeathRay.

  Chapter 3

  November 3, 2406 AD

  27 Light-years from the Sol System

  Thursday, 11:15 AM, Expeditionary Mission Standard Time

  The standard mission was always, “The recon team hits the objective in search of leads to any other quantum membrane teleportation addresses or hidden bases that were remains of the Martian separatist movement.” Mainly, the only things left were outposts that the crazy AIC Copernicus had created, probably completely unknown to his host, the terrorist leader Elle Ahmi. And history would never reveal the true nature of the American history during the civil war between the United States of the Sol System and the Martian separatists. Only a handful of trusted senior officers and family members related to the former President Moore—and now-reinstated U.S. Marine Corps General Moore—knew what had happened. And the orders were that it would remain that way forever.

  One of the few trusted soldiers in the inner circle of the U.S.S. Sienna Madira’s senior crew was Army Brigadier General Mason Warboys. Warboys had brought along with him the Warlords, the top hovertank unit in the entire U.S. military. And as standard procedure, once the recon team had been inserted, then, as diversionary tactics, the Armored Environment Suit Marines and the Army Tank Squad were dropped—and let loose hell—with the intent of mopping up any extra resistance forces and totally wiping out the existence of any automated threats.

  The AEMs had ridden on top of the tanks after deployment from the Madira all the way to the surface, as was the usual procedure. It was a technique that Warboys and one of the senior Marines had
come up with years ago at the battle for Kuiper Belt Station.

  Warboys’ tank hit the surface of the planetoid with a soft crunching sound. He quickly transformed it to bot mode and drew up a phalanx line with the rest of the Warlords, running in a V, directly into the enemy line where the Army and Marines were drawing heavy fire. There was very little gravity on the planetoid, so the computer systems and the AICs onboard the hovertanks had to make up for the exaggerated motion with the propulsionless drive and thrusters. Sensors showed a well of artificial gravity several kilometers up, but the computers would take care of all that without having to bother the tank drivers.

  “All right, Warlords. This is Warlord One,” Warboys said. “Stay tight on me, and let’s push a hole through these bots so that the Marines can spread out and make sure none of them get past us. And keep an eye on the strafing runs from above. Duck and cover as you see fit.”

  “Roger that,” was the resounding response from the Warlords. “Fuckin’ hoowah, One!”

  Warboys looked at the scene in his direct-to-mind display of the battlefield and could see hundreds of red targets in any direction he looked. They were several klicks from where the recon team had been inserted, and he hoped that at least some of that excitement the Warlords could draw toward themselves. Warboys pounded across the surface with his DEGs on auto, firing at any threats from above, and his cannons taking out any surface threats. The planetoid’s automated defensive systems were mostly small, unarmored robotic threats, little bots with weapons but not much in the way of armor. It didn’t take a whole lot for a hovertank to squash them, Warboys thought, but they were still deadly if their cannon fire were to come through the hull plating and hit the cockpit, something that he’d seen on the last drop. Fortunately the automated bots weren’t that good at fighting. Nobody had quite figured out why that was, because they ought to be just as good as, if not better than, the humans.

  “All right, Warlords, let’s bring hell,” Warboys thought out loud.

  “Warlord One! Warlord One! This is Warlord Six.”

  “Go, Six.”

  “I’ve got some big movement just over the horizon.”

  “Roger that, Six. I see it in the QMs. I’m going to infrared. See if it has a heat signature,” Warboys replied. Hmm, he thought to himself. What’s this? Something new?

  Running a full scan on it, sir, his AIC replied into his mind. The signature is quite large. Very similar to that of a tank.

  No shit, Warboys thought.

  Bringing up a full electro-optical view now, sir. The image of the new automated threat appeared in his mind and was almost an exact copy of a Martian separatist hovertank.

  “Son of a bitch!” Warboys said out loud. “Warlords! Warlords! We got something new! Looks like the bots have built themselves some tanks! Be alert and be ready to go, and here they come! Fan out! Fan out!”

  The Warlords spread out. Warboys turned back to hovertank mode and increased speed to drive straight through the line of bot tanks approaching them. And they were approaching fast. At over seventy kilometers per hour in tank mode, Warboys pounded through the line, crashing into one of the bot tanks’ legs. Sparks flew as the metals scraped against each other, and Warboys was thrown forward with a jolt.

  Immediately he toggled the tank to bot mode and rolled over headfirst, coming up in a forward flip onto one knee. He instantly brought his shoulder-mounted cannons to bear behind him at the bot that he’d just clipped in the leg, targeting weak points at joints and the head. Warboys had fought the hell out of the Martian Seppy tanks for years and he was good at it. These bot tanks didn’t seem to respond much differently. It was almost as if they had watched old battle data and copied the Seppy maneuvers and tactics.

  The purple plasma balls spread out from his cannons, exploding on impact at the joint just below the left hip of the bot tank. The leg blew apart in a shower of debris and shrapnel and what appeared to be various fluids required to keep the bot tanks functional. The droplets and fragments spread out into a rapidly dissipating cloud in the low gravity. Before Warboys could turn to finish off the bot, Warlord Three landed, feet first, onto the torso of the bot, smashing the metaphorical piss and other fluids out of it.

  “Thanks, Three,” Warboys said.

  “No problem, One. We’ve got your back.”

  Warboys spun just in time for two other bot tanks to dive for him. In a judo roll, he took the motion of one and tossed it aside, but the other caught him mid-back and splayed him out toward the surface. Debris flew thirty meters high and began to create a cloud of slowly settling dust in the light gravity. Warlord Three dropped his cannons and loosed several rounds into the bot tank, sending it flailing backwards and throwing dust and debris into a long, slow, falling arced trajectory. The dust cloud surrounding the battle continued to get thicker and thicker. Warboys briefly hoped it wouldn’t cause an issue for sensors. Almost as soon as he hit the ground he rolled over to find another tank in bot mode kicking him in the face and landing directly on him.

  “We’re kickin’ up so much dust that you can’t see shit, One!” Warlord Seven said over the tac-net.

  “Stay on the QM sensors and IR. The dust is too much for eyeballs,” Warlord One replied. He pushed up from the surface as hard as he could with his forearms, tossing both himself and his attacker upward, off the surface. Warlord One spun with an elbow, crashing into the side of what should be the head of the tank. But with these robotic tanks it was hard to say where the controls were. The blow had little discernable effect on the bot.

  Warboys continued to sling elbows, kick, and knee at every opportunity, fire his cannons, and roll as best he could, but the enemy tank in bot mode was relentless, and he couldn’t seem to shake it from his back. Warboys could hear metal creaking and groaning against the strain, and he was afraid that his tank wouldn’t take it much longer without popping seals and other important mechanical components, like himself, for instance.

  “One, you’ve gotta shake that one on your tail! You’re beginning to lose plasma from your rear thrusters!”

  “No shit, Two! Tell me something I haven’t figured out yet! Somebody shoot this son of a bitch off my back! Where are you, Three?”

  “Negative, One, we might hit you!”

  “So?” Warboys rolled and still couldn’t shake the bot. “I don’t give a damn! Shoot this son of a bitch, that’s an order! I don’t care if you hit me, one of us is gonna have to have some relief!”

  Warboys could see in his direct-to-mind virtual battlesphere that Warlord Four rammed into both of them in tank mode and forced them into a hill just ahead of them. That was all the relief that Warboys needed. He rolled with the momentum and turned within the grip of the bot, slamming his armored tank fist into the inner workings of the enemy tank, pulling it closer to him.

  “Guns, guns, guns,” he said with a grunt as his cannons fired a burst of rounds into the bot tank at point-blank range, blowing it apart and scattering debris and orange plasma about them in each direction, the glowing cinders of metal leaving a slowly falling lazy “M” traced out from where they had been. Warboys bounced to a stop as his thrusters and propellantless drive attenuated the momentum to something controllable.

  Chapter 4

  November 3, 2406 AD

  27 Light-years from the Sol System

  Thursday, 11:15 AM, Expeditionary Mission Standard Time

  “Roger that, Air Boss!” USMC Colonel Caroline “Deuce” Leeland, commander of the USMC FM-12 Strike Mecha squadron the Utopian Saviors, said over the command circuit. The Saviors was only one of two squadrons left over from the old Sienna Madira crew. The other was the Navy squadron Demon Dawgs. They had been an Ares-T squadron but Moore had decided to go with all FM-12s for maintenance simplicity on the long deep-space mission. There had been a lot of retraining for the squids and retooling and software upgrades to enhance the FM-12s. They were more versatile and capable than ever before.

  “Ground pounders need some cover. Sa
viors are on it. Deuce out.”

  Deuce toggled over to the fighter wing tactical net and brought the full battlescape DTM into her mind. The Utopian Saviors all showed blue and fully capable. Deuce looked the battleview over in her mind for a brief second and zoomed in on the planetoid surface where the AEMs and tanks had landed. There was a swarm of AutoGnats, as the mecha jocks called them, buzzing the shit out of the ground pounders. The AutoGnats were very similar in appearance to the old Separatist Gnat fighting mecha but they were run by AI and made much more harrowing g-loaded turns. On the other hand, they were not very creative and good mecha pilots usually tore them up.

  “Listen up, Saviors! The ground pounders are getting lit up from above. We need to get in there and pull those AGs off of them and get them up into a ball. Just like the last two missions!” Deuce briefed her team.

  “Same shit, different star system,” her wingman, Major Timothy “Goat” Crow, said. The two of them had been flying together for a couple of decades and had seen some bad days together during the Separatist War.

  “Oo-fuckin-rah, Deuce!” Captain Shawna “Golfbag” Fernandez added.

  “Alright. Form up on your wingmen and dive. Let’s hit fast in fighter mode and target as many as we can on the first run-through. When you hit the deck, mix up with them in bot or eagle as you need to. Let’s see if we can pull their attention away from the tankheads. And then we’ll pull them up into a ball and take the bastards out. Maximum velocity with maximum ferocity, Marines!” Deuce threw the HOTAS (Hands On Throttle And Stick) control forward with her right hand and slammed the throttle all the way to the stop with her left. The armored fighter pitched nose down at the planetoid. The star field was blotted out by the dull gray of the frozen rock and the occasional metallic glint from the bot base. Deuce could see flashes all across the surface where the fighting was going on. From the looks of it, the AEMs and the tankheads were having a busy day.